I started writing when I was ten. I hammered out plays on an old Underwood typewriter that my mother had in her bedroom. As a teen, I published poems in the South Philly Review Chronicle. At Temple University, I won the Young Poets contest for a poem I wrote about a high school classmate I was in love with. Since those early days, I have continued to answer the call of my life's greatest passion: I spent 10 years working for the Philadelphia Gay News as a reporter, then Local News Editor and finally Managing Editor. Arriving in San Francisco in 1991, I wrote for a few years for the SF Bay Times. I published Between Little Rock and a Hard Place in 1993, then co-edited Hey Paesan: Writing by Lesbians and Gay Men of Italian Descent in 1999. In 2008, I was part of a group of editors that put together Avanti Popolo: Italian Writers Sail Beyond Columbus. This year, I edited Smash the Church, Smash the State: the early years of gay liberation for City Lights Books, to mark the 40th anniversary of Stonewall and the birth of gay liberation. I write regularly for beyondchron.org and maintain a website with some of my writings: avicollimecca.com. I have always been, and remain, a political activist as well as a writer, fighting for economic justice for all. That means affordable housing, living wage jobs, free public transportation, universal healthcare, and ownership of the means of production by the workers. Avanti popolo!